Freelance writers are always looking for ways to be more efficient while practicing their craft. Speech recognition programs can speed things up by transcribing your speech so could compose articles on the go. In some cases, it might be able to transcribe interviews as well. Here’s a look at three options:
DragonNaturally Speaking for instance, is speech recognition software that lets you speak into a microphone while it types what you say on your computer. It is a PC program that is great for those slow typists like me who want to save some time, for multitasking moms or people with certain disabilities. The latest version of this program, Dragon NaturallySpeaking Home, Version 11, is sold on Amazon for $49.99 and works with Windows 7, Vista, and XP. Some users love the accuracy and ease of use with this software. Others say the program is too slow and needs extra time to figure out what a person is saying. One Amazon reviewer said not to even spend the money on buying this software if you have Windows 7.
Windows 7 and Windows Vista include the Windows Speech Recognition program at no additional charge. With either of these programs, you’ll need to read the instruction manual and go through training. During training, you will learn how to use the software correctly and you will train it to adapt to your voice. This program is said to have an accuracy rate of about 96 percent (after training). My sister-in-law is currently using Dragon to type up her graduate school papers and she says it is a wonderful program and a huge timesaver.
The MacSpeech Scribe is a voice recognition program that’s compatible with the Macintosh and works with the iPhone and digital recorders. Some users say this software works great after training it to recognize their voice and speech patterns while others are less than thrilled. They say the software is buggy and crashes often. Additionally, it does not come with automatic backup so any work dictated into it will be lost if the program crashes.
If you are looking to invest in voice recognition software, make sure you first read reviews about the product and be certain that the program is compatible with your computer system. Also, sometimes these products will not work at their best on a computer that is outdated and doesn’t have the necessary memory to run it.
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